Links

Oh hey, a new HUMBLE BUNDLE! It feels like I say this every time, but this may be THE BEST ONE YET:

For two weeks, you can pay whatever you want to get these DRM-free games on Windows, Mac, and Linux: Psychonauts, LIMBO, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. If you choose to pay more than the average price, you will also receive Bastion! Each game comes with its soundtrack in both lossless (FLAC) and MP3 formats.

Each of the games can optionally be redeemed on Steam, and bundle buyers can also choose to support the Child’s Play Charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two non-profits doing excellent work in the name of gamers worldwide.

All of these games have received accolades for pushing the envelope in their respective genres and delivering incredible storytelling and gameplay. All of the games are debuting on Linux, and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is new on Mac.

Psychonauts
The acclaimed action-platformer Psychonauts bears all the marks of a mad Tim Schafer/Double Fine creation: a zany premise, standout characters, and fun-above-all gameplay. In Psychonauts, you play as Raz, a psychically gifted kid at a summer camp-slash-training facility for mentalist super agents. When the camp falls to a dastardly deception, it’s up to Raz to traverse through the minds of various camp characters to save himself and his friends.

LIMBO
The captivating puzzle-platformer LIMBO is a modern classic, putting players in control of a boy’s journey through a tense and hostile world. The protagonist is as fragile and hardy as you’d expect of a young kid, making for a novel and sometimes surprisingly intense adventure. With incredibly tight platforming, detailed 2D graphics, and well-designed puzzles, LIMBO has rightfully earned critical and popular acclaim for the Danish indie studio, Playdead.

Amnesia: The Dark DescentAmnesia: The Dark Descent is Frictional Games’ first-person, survival horror masterpiece, pitting a weaponless protagonist against the darkest secrets of the castle he’s trapped in. With an emphasis on puzzle-solving and maintaining sanity amidst unspeakable abominations, Amnesia’s tense adventure breaks new ground for a well-loved, but challenging genre.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EPSuperbrothers: The Sword & Sworcery EP delivers a completely fresh adventure gaming experience, defying conventions to develop a unique kind of storytelling. The plot is unveiled in “sessions,” each of which involves traveling through the countryside and solving puzzles and combat challenges. Every scene overflows with rich graphic and auditory details, featuring distinctive artwork by Superbrothers Inc and music and sound design by Jim Guthrie.

Bastion
The action-RPG Bastion won over the gaming public with its incredible attention to every detail—from the tight combat controls, to the inspired, narrator-driven storytelling in a novel, post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Players take on the role of the Kid, entrusted with the thankless task of restoring the world after a disastrous calamity. With a none-too-small arsenal of stylized weapons, jaw-dropping art, and amazing music, Bastion truly deserves its reputation as a must-play indie game by Supergiant Games.

New feature for Ubuntu users
Also, for Humble Indie Bundle V, we’ve incorporated a feature that allows Ubuntu users to redeem bundle games through the Ubuntu Software Center. Look for the orange “Download for Ubuntu” button on your download page to give it a try!

This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 31st, 2012 at 6:50 pm and is filed under News.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Everything runs, but I had to start Limbo form the shell with sh /opt/limbo/launch-limbo.sh, and there is NO sound at all. I’m hoping that this bug gets fixed ASAP.

The other games are pretty amazing. Bastion is going to make me break out my XBox controller, Amnesia is SCARY, Psychonauts goes back to the old MDK2 days, and Sword & Sorcery is Yet Another minimal graphics game, with apparently a ton of content.

I haven’t been this happy with a Humble Bundle since, well the first one. To quote the late great Captain Beefheart, “I think this is the best batch yet!”

Has anyone had issues with Bastion running really slow?
Yes, it runs fine for awhile then after the 3rd or 4th time loading a level it just crawls to a halt. I had a similar problem with another Mono based game SpaceChem and the solution there was to run it with my system’s packaged Mono but that doesn’t seem to work with Bastion due to FMOD.

It’s a shame, the games in there look fantastic and you can’t even buy them individually from the respective websites. I hope psychonauts will be made available for sale on desura or on the official website at least. The same is for bastion. I don’t really mind the rest.

While a great bundle they should include a warning as to system requirements. I bought a copy and tried to run the games, 2 just won’t boot after starting, 1 loads up for 20 mins and then crashes and another has ridiculous slowdown. At least now I have a few gifts to give my friend for their birthday.

Just an update: apparently doing a native port for Limbo was not possible at all because of a third party library getting in the way. I think programmers shouldn’t buy middleware that doesn’t work on Linux in the first place, but once you pay the licence and get everything embedded it in your code you can’t go back.
I also think programmers should work on Linux from the beginning and then port to other platforms, but that’s something else.
The good news is that a Linux version of said library might be released in the future, so if not Limbo, at least other products relying on it will have an easier way to Linux.

Seems the trend is still keeping up, that Linux users are prepared to pay more than microsoft users or Apple users (guess they are so poor after spent so much on their iMac ;)

Average Windows: $7.97
Average Mac: $9.99
Average Linux: $12.50

This shows that Linux users are prepared to pay ~57% more for games than microsoft users, but we still are just one 1/9 of the market and I guess that is the reason why so few will start develop for Linux and then port to other operating systems, sadly DirectX has made porting a lot difficult, if they could stick to OpenGL, which is more or less supported on all platforms (including a bunch of small operating systems), then it would be so much easier to port games. Keep in mind, it don’t seem like 2/9 is really enough for getting proper Mac support, but at least if there is a Mac version of something, it should be easier to get a Linux version, as the game would already have OpenGL support. Mac + Linux users are still paying more than 40% more than microsoft users and together we are 1/3 of the market, the day we are up on a 50% of the market, I think things will change, as there will be more profit from Mac and Linux users than from the microsoft users, but I fear that when the day comes, the Linux user base will be less than 15%, which means the Mac users will be the primary targets and porting to Linux will be as today, but cheaper.